#romcom bl

[chaos0pikachu]

"are bls to raunchy nowadays?" No, go outside. "where are all the sweet bls with no sex, violence, porn or drugs?" there's 26 coming out from one studio and offgun are starring in 16 of them while geminifourth star in the other 42 open your eyeballs

[gunsatthaphan]

sweet tooth good dentist 🦷🪥 - coming march 21st

[pharawee]

Love is like starlight in the dark. The stars will guide your heart to find your soulmate. They're not far away. Just look and you will find them.

[mikuni14]

If 4 Minutes is a grim and bloody series, then explain this:

Bonus: me as nurse Bee, watching gays and their bullshit love life on my small and big internet, every day, making this my whole personality

[heretherebedork]

It's c/horny vampires and the university student that makes him lose his mind and messy gays trying to finally escape complicated abuse and machinations with the first good man he ever met day! Yay!!

[lurkingshan]

Theory of Love: The Romcom Rewatch

It's happening, folks! @bengiyo sealed his fate with a comment on the most recent episode of @the-conversation-pod, in which he mentioned that the next time he watches Theory of Love, he wants to start with watching the film in parallel with the episode that references it. Since this show is an all time favorite for me and my bestie @neuroticbookworm, there was simply no way we were going to let this golden opportunity pass us by, and we're dragging a few friends in with us. As always, never underestimate my ability to turn a stray thought into a whole project.

So here's how it will work! Every Saturday for the next 13 weeks we will watch the featured film + its corresponding TOL episode and post our shared thoughts about the relevant themes and points of interest. Here is the full list of films in order:

Dear Dakanda

Love Actually

Friends with Benefits

Crazy Stupid Love

10 Things I Hate About You

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Flipped

The Proposal

The Last Moment

Begin Again

He’s Just Not That Into You

My Girl

Stand By Me

I wanted to share this on tumblr in case anyone else would like to join us, either by reading along and engaging with our weekly posts, or by watching and posting your own thoughts. We'll aim to post on Saturdays, but anyone should feel free to jump in and join us anytime throughout the week. We'll use the tag [#tol romcom rewatch] to make it easy to find everyone's posts. If you're having trouble tracking down any of the films, let us know and we will crowdsource the issue.

Hope to see some of you as we discuss!

[tharatorns]

BEST OF: KONGTHAP KAWIWAT MY LOVE MIX-UP! | EP. 1

[bengiyo]

We Figured Out Where I Heard That Song in Theory of Love Episode 10

This post is mostly for the BL OG's who care about earworms.

Every time I've watched Theory of Love since 2019, I get caught up in the song Ching Ching is singing in her audition for their play in episode 10. Since we had @happypotato48 with us for the Theory of Love Romcom Rewatch project, I got him to help me figure out what song she's singing, and he revealed that it is รักไม่ต้องการเวลา by Klear.

Now that I finally knew what the damn song was, I surmised that it must have been from the first wave of BL, in likely Make It Right, but potentially Love Sick or SOTUS. I asked @troubled-mind, @negrowhat, @ctl-yuejie, @benkaben, @wanderlust-in-my-soul, @absolutebl, and @respectthepetty if they remembered it. ctl-yuejie suggested it must be from Make It Right based on its common appearance on OST playlists, and Josi mentioned tat NuNew had done a cover of it.

Foolishly, I presumed that the song must have been in Make It Right Season 2, so I started there. Let me tell you, after 8 years the overuse of the soundtrack in that season has not aged well at all, and the Book Frame storyline is carrying the show for at least six episodes.

However! Pluem found the song yesterday when I was chatting with him and @so-much-yet-to-learn about it! It is in Make It Right 1x08 at the 39:40 mark when Fuse and Tee are having an emotional conversation by the pool that ends in a series of romantic camera angle kisses.

I am so glad to have this mystery solved so that I can finally rest. Shout out to @lurkingshan, @twig-tea, @solitaryandwandering, and @neuroticbookworm who listened to me mention this repeatedly for over two weeks as I searched for this answer.

Thank you again to @happypotato48 for putting up with searching through Thai websites for me to find the answer.

[dragonsareawesome123]

This is SUCH a cute poster 🥰🥰🥰

[twig-tea]

TOL Romcom Rewatch Week 7: Flipped

It is so nice to be writing this post on time! This week we watched Flipped, which is a film I had forgotten I’d watched, because I had memory shelved it so hard (for good reason–see @lurkingshan’s post). While the film itself was not good, thinking about the parallels with Theory of Love was really fun, and it felt like the most plot parallels we’ve had to date.

@solitaryandwandering asked me whether my thesis from last week's 1-6 round-up post--that there were actually good messages in these films for Third to learn from, if Third watched them more closely--continued into this week, and I think the answer is yes! The biggest thing Third missed, to me, is that when Juli realizes that Bryce sucks, she tells him outright and to his face what he did and why she was no longer interested in him, not even as a friend. This, then, emboldens Bryce, first to change his behaviour and then to make amends. In contrast, Third has only at best hinted that he knew ("you played with my emotions!"), but he didn't outright confront him on anything except how frequently he changes partners. Khai doesn’t actually know that Third knows that Khai intentionally tried to bait him into confessing. At this point in the story, Khai thinks Third is done with him because he kissed Third and said Praew’s name, and that him expressing sincerity with someone had the intended effect of making Third get over him (which is also partially true). This means that, unlike Bryce, Khai doesn’t yet know what he’s up against in terms of making Third trust any of his behaviour, which explains some of his stumbles in this episode (in addition to the insights Shan already talked about in her post re: Khai having no experience with dating a man, or dating a friend, or wanting to date Third, or particularly caring about any of his previous partners). 

One of the things I love about this perspective flip is how effectively it is used in the series; it’s something I especially love thinking about in the context of having watched this film, which did not use this device effectively. Having seen Khai’s behaviour from Third’s perspective, when we didn’t know what he was thinking, was really effective in hiding how much Khai knew, whether his behaviour was intentionally romantic, and whether it was sincere. It meant we felt the heartbreak with Third when we realized with him what Khai was actually doing. Now that Khai is genuinely being sincere about having romantic interest in Third, the most effective way for us as an audience to trust that is to hear Khai think it so that (unlike Third) we can feel certain in his intentions (even if we don’t trust that his feelings are going to last, or that he deserves reciprocation yet), and instead sit with Khai on his uncertainty about how Third is going to take his advances, whether he still has any feelings for Khai, and whether his sincerity will be believed. And in case we don't just trust Khai's thoughts (which is so fair after the first six episodes), we get to see him reject a girl, and have a physical reaction to Third, all of which is important in reinforcing that he is sincere.

I also just love seeing Third be distant, competent, cold, and difficult to read from Khai's perspective, after having seen inside Third's head for weeks and knowing that he is an angsty mess on the inside.

And on the flipside, we see that Khai does not realize that he comes across to the entire campus as such a douche, which is very fun after having sat with Third and knowing exactly what people see on the outside. The scene where he improvises on Third's script (based on himself, unbeknownst to him) and perfectly portrays the character is not something he understands as a bad thing, but the director is quick to point out that yes, this is perfect because it's exactly what a player would say.

I also speculated in last week’s post that we might be moving into more Khai-coded films with the change in perspective, but we know that Flipped is Third’s favourite movie, so I don’t think that’s the case (at least not yet). But I will be thinking about the plot of this film, knowing that Khai knows how much Third loves this movie, in the weeks to come.

[neuroticbookworm]

I am ridiculously late on my Theory of Love Romcom Rewatch Project posts, but I just wanna make a quick declaration that as of episode 12, I no longer think Two and Bone are good friends. The tepid apology for how they treated Khai after the fallout was not sufficient, and my Khai Apologist heart has demoted them and will hold this grudge till the day I die.

[gunsatthaphan]

ยาวิเศษ 🔮🪄💫

[tankhunmybeloved]

@poetry-protest-pornography made a fun bingo template for 2025, so here's my wishlist

[happypotato48]

Theory of Love Romcom Watch Along Episode 5 : 10 Things I Hate About You (Lazy Unhinged Edition)

Well well well well well well well well well (somebody stop me) well well well. It's 10 Things i Hate About You time, i haven't watch this movie since i was a wee little lad and i can say with my whole chest that this movie mostly hold up despite me not being snarky 15 years old anymore (i'm still snarky just not 15 anymore T_T) unlike many of my friends that participate in this project i'm probably the least familiar with shakespeare's works which i like to ratify soon since i tend to enjoys shakespeare modern adaptations and references. like my biggest fictional sad old man crush is based on Prospero from the Tempest ffs. anyway one thing that stuck out to as very positive for me from this movie is how poetically it feels i never read the The Taming of the Shrew but i noticed some line that probably came from the play, the well written scripts and the dialogues feels witty and sharp this movie did came off as a very well done modern (1999) take of shakespeare work.

Now to a side segment just for this week it's time to throw shades at Mr. Jojo Tichakorn as i had promised my good friend @lurkingshan. THK, The Heart forking Killers. first let let me say some positive stuff so some of you nerds would know that i'm not just a hater (i'm a snarky slightly crazy bitch that hope one day these posts would not come back and bite me in the ass when i enter the BL industry.)

THK mostly did an ok Job as adaptations/inspired by of 10 Things i Hate About You, some emotion do works well translate from the movie and i will give credit where the credit due i think the fall out and the resolution after the lie got discovered is handled pretty good in the show unlike the movie where it feels rushed and half baked.

Ok now after i said the all nice things let get mean!! most of THK dialogues are lame AF. it's like someone took a lot of the wittiness of the movie out and replaced that with lame tired and cliche BL dialogues. most of the actors ate their roles but even that some lines feels listless and lack flair. instead of charm the show sometime came off as trying too hard or trying too little to be charming. and that is the problem Thai language as a tonal language has a lot of possibility to do and says so much more interesting stuff but because it's a GMMTV show the dialogues feels stripped of any potential and ended up being generic and sanitized.

I'm the same with @solitaryandwandering feelling about the side stories. i'm so bored with them, i love you mike with all my heart but i can't spend another minute watching you and what her face hitting on each other. that being said i'm still intrigued by our main fuckboi Khai and loser with zero braincell Third even tho they're aggravating me so much. Khai continuingly semi unpurposefully hurts Third but the crack starts to show in this ep that he seems to some degree to know what is going on with Third.

In Thai he says "When he came to sleep with me like a wife, then i'd talk nicely to him." Khai maybe is in deny or he just an absolute asshole that let his subconscious hurts Third this badly. but it's clear he is catching up and acting out on purpose. and Third in his infinitely dumbassery refused to uses his god danm words. and the end those two ended were they always do uncommunicative and stuck in the a cycle of this toxic friendships. these two needs time out and spend time apart to reevaluate themselves and grows as people before i'd buy any kind of kind romantic relationship. but this is a BL sooo let see where this goes.

[lurkingshan]

Theory of Love Episode 1: Dear Dakanda

And we're off! We begin this week with a 2005 romcom classic from Thailand: Dear Dakanda (the Thai title is more like "Close Friend"). The plot, in brief:

Mhoo buzzes off his luscious mane of hair and heads south to hit the beach. An accident on a boat lands him in the hospital with a broken leg and flirting with a local nurse, Nui, and as he gets to know her we flash back to his uni days in Chiang Mai to see what he's running from: Dakanda, the girl he met during Freshy games, fell in love with, and stayed close friends with while pining after her hopelessly throughout college. In the end, he ends up confessing only via letters after he already gave up and ran away, and the film ends on an ambiguous note.

For those who have seen TOL, I think the parallels here are fairly obvious, and the posters above confirm: Mhoo's story is Third's story. Like Mhoo, Third never says a word about his feelings, choosing to keep it to himself and cry and rage alone. And similar to Khai in these early episodes, Dakanda seems totally oblivious to her friend's feelings as she enjoys spending time with him.*

*There's another parallel to a Thai BL here: Nui is clearly an inspiration for Tharn in I Told Sunset About You! I won't get into that as it's off topic for this discussion. But it's fun to watch old Thai media and newly understand how shows we love were referencing it.

This movie is so much about how Mhoo hurt himself with his slience for years, and ultimately gave up without giving Dakanda a chance to even respond to his confession. Unfortunately, Third doesn't seem to have learned anything from watching it. We hear in his review of the film that he romanticizes--and ends up emulating--Mhoo's behavior rather than recognizing that Mhoo set himself up to fail and things might have gone differently if he was willing to be more honest with his friend. As @bengiyo pointed out, the fact that Third gets caught up in these heterosexual romance films and takes all the wrong lessons from them is part of the conflict at the heart of this story. I love how the show signals that by pointing us to this film right at the start. And with its story over the next 12 weeks, TOL will be in dialogue with this film, ultimately rejecting the notion that Mhoo's refusal to communicate and ambiguous ending was romantic.

As for this first episode, I love how it drops us right in the middle of Third's dramatic pining spiral as it sets up the world of the show. One of the things the show is super clear on is that Khai's player behavior, while kind of dickish, is fairly normal and accepted--Two and Bone act exactly the same way--and Third is only pressed about it because of his feelings. But as the film framing this episode signals, Third never says anything, just gets increasingly resentful as Khai keeps unwittingly reminding him that they are not on the same page.

And of course, he makes it worse for himself by agreeing to help Khai deal with his exes, a truly self-destructive choice that only fuels his jealousy. And every time Khai behaves selfishly or thoughtlessly or does anything to remind Third that their feelings are not mutual, his anger only grows, but Third can't help but press on it like a bruise. I groaned when Third went to catch Khai at the theater with the date he ditched him for; stop torturing yourself, my guy! For his part, Khai has some maturing to do, as he is far too willing to be an ass to his friends in the name of hooking up, and he also just doesn't get that he is constantly hurting Third's feelings by treating him so casually. But for the first half of the show, we are firmly in Third's story and perspective, and I'm excited to see him get to the end of his rope.

Tagging in my other watch partners in case they have anything to add: @neuroticbookworm @solitaryandwandering and @twig-tea.

[witchzvamp]

oh no he's just a babygirl who needs help to cross the street guys help him